The customer comes first (Customer 1^st).

It’s a simple concept, but businesses often forget the sentence above. It comes from trying to put products and services in the market to beat the competition. At times, the market growth focus frustrates the customer. But why?

Simply, the business isn’t listening to the customer.

People have a need to be engaged. We want to be heard. Without the sense of connection to a product or service, we are not moved to buy what the company is selling.

In The Flow System (TFS), the outcome for Customer 1_st are simple:

• High Quality
• Lowest Cost
• Shortest Lead-Time

Given TFS builds on the Toyota Way and Toyota Production System (TPS), these points should not be surprising.

In a sense, TFS places the customer as both the starting point and ending point for all creative work. If you consider the number of products developed and manufactured each year, how many of those products get sold?

Millions upon millions based on measurement. The more important question is, how many products DO NOT get sold? As well, how many products get sold at a steep discount or a loss?

Stay Focused On Customer 1^st

By now, you might be wonder, “Why does this matter?”

The first answer is “waste”. We should be seeking to avoid creating wasteful products and services.

Science tells us that energy is indestructible. However, time is not. Once time is spent, it can’t be recovered.

As a result, staying connected to the people who would and do buy products and services becomes top priority. This link can help avoid creating wasteful products and services.

Are you familiar with the Microsoft Zune? It was designed to compete with Apple’s iPod (which is discontinued as with over 20 years in production).

It took approximate five years for the Zune to enter and leave the market. I wonder how many units were manufacture, but never sold.

We don’t know what discussions lead to creating the Zune. Further, we don’t have a full picture of how much time Microsoft invested in talking to potential customers.

What we do know is Apple’s product had a long, successful run in the market. The ratio is 4 to 1 between both products, the iPod and the Zune.

If the concept of “Customer 1st” had been followed, then the outcome of the competition might have been different.

TFS – Customer 1^st

Toyota Way 2020 / Toyota Code of Conduct | Vision & Philosophy | Company | Toyota Motor Corporation Official Global Website

Toyota Production System | Vision & Philosophy | Company | Toyota Motor Corporation Official Global Website

Reference to TFS —

_{©2019 Professor John Turner, Nigel Thurlow, Brian Rivera. The Flow System™ is offered for license under the Attribution license of Creative Commons, accessible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode and also described in summary form at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ By utilizing this Site and any information presented you acknowledge and agree that you have read and agree to be bound by the terms of the Attribution license of Creative Commons. The Flow System™, The DNA of Organizations™, and The Triple Helix of Flow™ are all trademarks of the copyright holders.}

Core principles, most people have them. To an extent, organizations do as well. Anchoring to core principles allows people to maintain objectivity.

In my assessment, having a reference to return to is essential to brining people together. It helps galvanize us when times get tough. The anchors help keep us firmly plant when success overwhelms us.

In The Flow System (TFS), the core principles are:

1. Customer 1^st.
2. The FLOW of value.
3. The Triple Helix of Flow ^TM
   • Complexity Thinking
   • Distributed Leadership
   • Team Science

The robust nature of the principles could be summarized this way.

By having a laser-like focus on our customer, we have an opportunity to flow value to the customer with them in mind. This is based because the organization embraces the Triple Helix of Flow. This support reconfiguring the company using complexity thinking, distributed leadership, and team science to adapt to the customers’ changing desires, needs, and wants.

The Past Informs The Future

There are a few passages from “Today and Tomorrow” by Henry Ford that are worth sharing.

“You may take something which people already know about and try to make a better design than is being offered. That might be the course to follow in commodities, but probably a better way is to judge the wants of the people by your own wants.

Then start from where you stand and let the public make your business for you. The public and only the public can make a business.”

Today and Tomorrow page 14

“That is the appeal of modern business to the young man.: he can begin with an organization whose crude experimental days are over and which stands able to do the things it was organized to do, and to do greater things because increased experience lead to greater and more successful experiment.”

Today and Tomorrow page 19

“Real business creates its own customers.”

Today and Tomorrow page 48

“Our own attitude is that we are charged with discovering the best way of doing everything, and that we must regard every process employed in manufacturing as purely experimental. If we reach a stage in production which seems remarkable as compared with what has gone before, then that is the stage of production and nothing more.. It is not and cannot be anything more than that. We know from the changes that have already been brought about that far greater changes are to come, and that therefore we are not performing a single operation as well as it ought to be performed.”

Today and Tomorrow page 48

Core Principles Across Time

Looking back nearly 100 years, Henry Ford was ahead of his time. He wrote about the concept of “Customer 1^st“, creating value, and complexity thinking.

The quotes above are useful in anchoring our thinking about TFS and its impact today and into the future. Consider what you may be missing as you start your own TFS journey.

Reference to TFS —

_{©2019 Professor John Turner, Nigel Thurlow, Brian Rivera. The Flow System™ is offered for license under the Attribution license of Creative Commons, accessible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode and also described in summary form at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ By utilizing this Site and any information presented you acknowledge and agree that you have read and agree to be bound by the terms of the Attribution license of Creative Commons. The Flow System™, The DNA of Organizations™, and The Triple Helix of Flow™ are all trademarks of the copyright holders.}

Frictionless flow, what a great concept! Businesses desire it, customers crave it, and people love it. Achieving it is more difficult than any of us can imagine.

Context helps sets up any post. In the prior post, The Flow System (TFS) was introduced.

Specifically, this post will cover the definition of TFS and origin story. First, the definition:

The Flow System™ enables business growth by eliminating non-value-added activities by fostering an environment for innovation and the rapid delivery of value and shortening the time to market.

The Flow System™ is a holistic FLOW based approach to delivering Customer 1st Value. It is built on a foundation of The Toyota Production System, also known as TPS and LEAN, plus a new triple helix structure known as the DNA of Organizations™.

The Flow System™ provides an understanding of different methods, patterns, practices, and techniques that enable organizations or institutions to achieve their desired outcomes.

Definition of The Flow System

Also, here is TFS history:

The Flow System™ has evolved from the emergence of product delivery in non-linear environments, also known as complex environments or complexity. It has expanded upon the work done between 1948 and 1975 on the Toyota Production System (TPS is also known as Lean), and the Toyota Way, first published in 2001 by Toyota. The Flow System™ is the evolution of lean thinking that we call flow thinking.

The Toyota Production System has become a model for organizations to achieve manufacturing excellence at the highest level of quality that is achievable. The Toyota Production System has as its primary focus the Customer. The Toyota Production System is built upon the pillars of Jidoka and Just in Time. Jidoka includes having the ability to stop a machine or process if and when a problem occurs. Just in Time includes the elimination of waste by removing non-value-added activities.

The foundation for the Toyota Production System is Standardization, establishing repeatable and predictable processes, and Kaizen, the philosophy of continuous improvement. The Toyota Production System has become the reference system when approaching linear and repeatable manufacturing. However, it is limited when dealing with ambiguous problems, highly variable processes, non-linearity, and unpredictability, all features of complexity.

The Toyota Way 2001 clarifies the values and business methods that all employees should embrace. Represented as the Guiding Principles of Toyota, the Toyota Way is depicted by the pillars of Continuous Improvement and Respect for People.

Toyota is never completely satisfied with where they are and are continuously working to improve their practices by advancing new ideas and empowering its workforce. Toyota respects its employees, shareholders, and stakeholders, and believe talented individuals and good teamwork create their success. Fulfilling its role as the backbone of an organization, an organization’s culture must evolve amid an ever-changing business environment.

The creators of The Flow System™ recognized that existing tools and frameworks could not holistically address complexity as organizations are not optimized to function in volatile and ambiguous environments. They also recognized that complexity thinking is different from lean thinking, and that new approaches and understanding are called for.

The creators of The Flow System™ acknowledge all the great minds that have created the thinking we follow today (too many to mention here) and have preserved the Toyota Production System and The Toyota Way as the inspiration and foundation of The Flow System™.

A Brief History of The Flow System

What Is Frictionless Flow?

Think of the best workday you ever experienced. You started a task and finished it. Possibly, you started and completed several tasks in one day. How did that feel?

Certainly, having a meeting where most actions were taken by team members, not assigned. Discussion was objective and focused on the work at hand, not perceived, individual action.

As well as any work time that is uninterrupted can create flow. Being immersed in work, completely focused on finishing tasks, gives a sense of limitless possibility.

Finally, conversations around product or service design can be frictionless. When the client or customer is describing how they want to feel about the product or service, it is an opportunity to discover why the sense matters. Building emotion into the design and follow-on work fosters momentum.

Reference to TFS —

_{©2019 Professor John Turner, Nigel Thurlow, Brian Rivera. The Flow System™ is offered for license under the Attribution license of Creative Commons, accessible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode and also described in summary form at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ By utilizing this Site and any information presented you acknowledge and agree that you have read and agree to be bound by the terms of the Attribution license of Creative Commons. The Flow System™, The DNA of Organizations™, and The Triple Helix of Flow™ are all trademarks of the copyright holders.}

Let me start with this, The Flow System, or TFS, is not another framework or methodology. It is a toolbox that enables companies and organizations to address challenges at the lowest level practical.

Fixing a struggling company is not easy, but it is not impossible either. Often, an organization needs better tools. Tools are useful in a particular context, which explains why a tool may create value in one instance. Differently, the same tool could cause damage.

For this series, we’ll be referring to the Flow Guide (https://flowguides.org). It is the starting point to help build an understanding of TFS. I want to credit Brian Rivera, John Turner, and Nigel Thurlow for their work in building the system.

This purpose statement explains TFS better than anything I could write:

Achieving a state of flow occurs when organizations/institutions produce outcomes in which their constraints (e.g., structure, processes, environmental effects) are shaped in a way that enable employees to concentrate on their own interactions among one another and the customer. Flow ultimately results in employees concentrating on the act of doing rather than combatting or succumbing to organizational friction.

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Many project management methods and agile frameworks concentrate on taskwork and the illusion of planning with no regard to how an organization is structured to support these activities. Organizations/institutions utilize teams but fall short in developing teamwork skills and fail to restructure leadership to maximize the benefits that can be obtained from the utilization of teams. These shortcomings introduce additional constraints and barriers that prevent organizations/institutions from achieving a state of flow.

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The Flow System™ provides a re-imagined system for organizations to understand complexity, embrace teamwork, and autonomous team-based leadership structures.

The Purpose of The Flow System

What The Flow System Is Not

TFS is not a replacement for other methodologies or frameworks. It may highlight a weakness in how the use of a process is suboptimal or, worse, failing. At that point, choices are on the table.

As well, TFS won’t “fix” certain organizational behavior. It can move people toward different ways of work if the business is willing to change.

Additionally, TFS can’t save a company from failing products or services. It is up to the employees to decide to use the tools provided by TFS. They can help resolve those issues.

For my kick-off posts on TFS, click on this link – Agile Value #4 – Embrace Change Like Life Depends On It and this link – Plunge Into The Flow To Find Insight.

Getting into the flow is purposeful. My thoughts on the concept of flow are evolving. I’m glad that it is now discussed in the product and service development space.

The discussion has not achieved clarity. Much like Agile as a philosophy, it has become less clear and more polarized.

In 2023, I will write a post series covering “Flow”. The series will be like my series on Scrum values and Agile values.

Consider this as the cinema trailer. “Coming to social media near you and only on www.timdickey.com!”

Let me be clear, there is a difference between personal and business flow. Personal experience informs business result. Do you want to know why?

Because people are involved!

Without people, you can have motion. But then, flow has a different meaning. Recognizing the difference is part of how organizations and individuals can generate a sense of momentum.

Into the flow

Rather than weigh in on a side of the concept, I’m going to write about tools that enable the flow. For this reason, tools must be used based on context, not preference.

Context-specific tool use is important as a flow enabler.

Essentially, misusing tools can cause more harm than good. I present each tool for context-specific employment.

You might be thinking, “What is context-specific?”

Simply, you use a tool as designed, not the way you want to.

My goal is, as we dive into the series, it will cause several responses.

• First, personal reflection.
• Second, organizational questions.
• Third, insightful conversation.

If the series does not challenge you, then you know more than I do. Given my appetite for learning, I will gladly entertain conversations on this topic.

I know people who are smarter on this subject, so I expect this journey will be challenging.

To begin, keep your mind open. Next, come learn alongside me and reason together. Finally, enjoy the discussion we have during 2023.